[mardef]

It's not the same, but I don't know if it's worse.

My IRQ conflict resolution skills or knowledge about himem.sys aren't really useful these days.

But I've seen genz kids do incredible things with Minecraft mods and the like that make me reminisce about quake modding.

The masses are just blindly using devices, but the masses didn't even have a PC at home 30 years ago.

[EvanAnderson]

> My IRQ conflict resolution skills or knowledge about himem.sys aren't really useful these days.

Your ability to meticulously solve a problem using a systematic troubleshooting approach is always useful. You just happened to hone the skill w/ IRQ conflicts and himem.sys.

[tharkun__]

Agreed. And while what we did to get into the details and discover are different some kids still do.

Heck I did the same. Dip switches galore. Did I know what an IRQ actually is on the OS level while solving IRQ conflicts as a kid? Heck no! Only years later when I no longer needed to did I understand what those actually are/were.

The today equivalent of learning about autoexec.bat and config.sys to not load the cdrom driver because else this one game wouldn't start because it did not have enough memory is figuring out what's behind the Steam "Start" button and where the games "live" and how you can get what you want instead of doing everything through steam.

The kids that are the today equivalent of us in the old days do exist.

[CapitalistCartr]

(Smile) 30 years ago was 1995, when most people did. You're thinking 1985. Forty years ago.

[k1t]

In 1995 around 1 in 3 US homes had a computer.

[amatecha]

Yeah in Canada it looks like about 28% of homes had a personal computer in 1995, according to Stats Canada: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/56f0004m/2005012/c-g/c1-...

[neuralRiot]

It used to be that if you wanted to do gaming on a PC you started by building the PC.

[dingnuts]

That hasn't changed. Of course there are pre builts but there were twenty years ago, too. I should know -- I had one. I built my third gaming PC myself.

[tharkun__]

There were pre builts many years before your 20 years ago too. I used to build my computers myself as well 30 years ago and my dad did 40 years ago ;)

[RajT88]

I dunno... My C64 required very little assembly.

[jeffwask]

I think coding skills don't lag as far behind with those who enjoy coding. It's a hell of a lot easier to learn and more accessible than it ever was. Plus applications like modding make learning fun.

It's more systems, networks, OS fundamentals... i.e. how you pull all the pieces together and make them work especially among your "non-technical" user set.

[RajT88]

I code more for fun now, because the proliferation of higher end languages and libraries for practically everything drastically reduces the time to that first "wow cool!" moment.

I'm sure it's the same with young people.